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Sensing
With the steady drop in the price and size of components, integration of smart systems is on the rise. Nanoscale sensors in laptops lock their hard drive heads as they are being dropped, car seats sense occupancy to inform airbag deployment, remote pipelines are monitored for the slightest leak, minimally invasive glucometers track blood sugar and new applications and solutions emerge every day.
Optical Fiber Sensors (OFSs) offer ever-increasing benefits over electronic sensors, under various conditions, to monitor: temperature, pressure, strain, radiation, current, voltage, vibration, acoustic and seismic changes, humidity, viscosity, as well as chemical and biological states and changes.
The benefits of OFSs include: low weight, miniature size, passivity, resistance to electromagnetic (EM) and radio-frequency (RF) interference, low power consumption, remote placement, high sensitivity, reliability, easy interrogation, and good performance in harsh environments.
Chiral OFSs – Helica™ Sensors – build on the strengths of conventional OFSs. Helica Sensors can withstand much higher temperatures than standard OFSs, enabling more deeply probing and durable borehole monitoring. Helica Sensors permit higher optical peak pulse powers for more sensitive chemical or vibration measurements. Helica Sensors also offer sensitivity to torque.
Polarization often plays a role in optical fiber sensing. Navigational fiber optic gyroscopes (FOGs) rely on polarized light. Many OFS applications require linear or circular polarized light to maximize sensitivity and Chiral Photonics offers in-fiber solutions that pair Helica polarizers with Helica sensors - at any wavelength.
Filters and lasers figure prominently in optical fiber sensing. Chiral Photonics is hard at work developing Helica Lasers and Filters. When complete, the end-to-end in-fiber sensing system, marked by easy manufacturability and easy integration, will allow for smooth lab to field deployment. Moreover, this uniformly constituted sensing system holds ongoing efficiencies. The Helica source laser reduces costs and power consumption, while the Helica filter moves beyond polarization to allow narrow or broadband filtering that can be tailored to the application.
In addition, thanks to Chiral Photonics’ proprietary chiral technology and microfabrication, there is no need for photosensitive fiber. Whatever the fiber of choice, Chiral Photonics can turn it into a sensor.
Helica Sensors are prototyped for a wide variety of functionality to provide sensing solutions that are more rugged, more sensitive, more customized, and more economical. Find a sensing solution where you never knew one possible. Contact Chiral Photonics today.
Oil and Gas
Opitcal Fiber Sensors measure temperature and pressure in boreholes where temperatures exceed 300°C. OFS systems optimize extraction, monitor conditions, and sense failures. Seismic OFSs further the reach of oil and gas reservoir exploration. OFSs also detect, in real-time, the very smallest pipeline or storage tank leaks without introducing electricity into combustible environments. Helica™ Sensor Gratings fabricated in fibers optimized for high temperature service enable enhanced monitoring and longer sensor lifetimes.
Power Grid
OFSs permit power plants and other high voltage and high power installations to tightly monitor power generation, transmission, and distribution.
Navigation Systems
The future of motion sensing, navigation, stabilization, and precision pointing systems belongs to FOGs. FOGs offer insensitivity to EM and RF noise, vibration, acceleration, and shock, in a form factor much smaller than that of electronic solutions. FOGs enhance performance of vehicles and systems from aircraft, submarines, spacecraft, cars, and guided missiles to consumer electronics like video game controllers and laptops.
Manufacturing
OFSs can be used for real-time monitoring of many aspects of manufacturing from taking temperature and strain readings during the fabrication and curing of composite structures to sensing of pharmaceutical plant conditions and assuring maximum product yields no matter how challenging the environment.
Smart Structures
To allow nondestructive health, aging, and damage sensing, engineers now embed OFSs into structures of all sorts - bridges, dams, highways, water mains, buildings, aircraft, spacecraft, turbines, high voltage power lines, storage tanks and factories. Often a single OFS system measures two or more conditions via co-located temperature and strain sensors, for instance. Some systems are so smart that, via a fiberoptic link, they can respond to feedback and optimize the structure accordingly, such as skyscrapers that can actively dampen vibrations via actuators to protect the building during earthquakes or wind turbines that rotate and tilt to optimally catch the wind and maximize energy output.
Medicine
As health-monitoring devices, OFSs offer special benefits. These include tiny size, performance in harsh surroundings, inherent safety, lack of electrical shock threat, and resistance to EM and RF radiation, present when using an
GeoSeismic
Wide area OFS networks monitor stress in critical fault locations or volcano dome buildups to predict natural disasters and permit rapid response.
